It often goes unsaid but Iranian leaders want, and apparently need, tensions with the U.S. to justify their existence

It often goes said as well.

Wow. This Iranian bind is another example of Obama's political jujitsu skills. (Also maybe, wanting Joe the Traitor to stay in the Dems so he can't blame them for kicking him out - but still, pls. don't let Lieberman stay as a Chair.)
Meta-pwning! Far beyond the outgoing deciders to have appreciated.

Kinda of like the Republicans need bad relations with Arabs to stay in power.

"Kinda of like the Republicans need bad relations with Arabs to stay in power."

Truth

Actually, Neil B, I'm not sure it's got anything to do with Obama. I'd say it has more to do with the fact that this is yet another situation where the Bush Administration's politicization of every imaginable issue is being revealed as good politics (in the narrow sense of the Republican party's interests) but bad policy.

This is yet another situation where Bush's decision to lead with his gut and consider domestic electoral interests instead of using facts to craft a policy that makes sense for the country has clearly backfired. The war on Iraq and the war in Afghanistan played well to domestic political interests, but only strengthened Iran's hand in the region, and the Bush folks couldn't see that because they didn't bother to do their homework. Saber-rattling against Iran strengthened the political leadership's hand within Iran, because ditto. All Obama has done is act as a leader of the whole country, instead of using tough talk to impress certain folks at home.

At least in symbolic terms, there really is only one president right now -- and it ain't Bush.

Obama's got 'em right where he wants 'em. Now, on to Israel and resolving their problems. That really is the one-two punch needed for the region.

Both the WaPo headline and the headline of this post are completely unwarranted by the flimsy substance of the Post article, which adds nothing of import to what we already know about the positions of the Iranian government.

>"...Obama's position on diplomacy has suddenly become a political problem for Iran's leadership."

Both the neocons and the Iranian leadership depend on animosity and fear to acquire and hold power.

Take that away and... ???

Amazing how the prospects for peace are more destabilizing to the Iranian establishment than any inevitably-counterproductive-and-destructive bombing campaign or war of internal subterfuge.

Why is that so amazing? The election last week showed that prospects for peace were equally destabilizing to the U.S. establishment.

In the upcoming elections for a successor to Ahmadinejad, the conservative candidate will be saying:

My opponent has said he would meet with the American President without preconditions. That's not change we can believe in, my friends!

Iranian leaders are further in a bind b/c a majority of the Iranian middle class wants normalized relations with the U.S., meaning there's added pressure to respond to the (theoretically) new stance of the US Gov.

So as soon as the U.S takes a more calibrated approach to Iran they loose their advantage from calling the US as the aggressor. So now it appears that Obama has put a light on that forces Iran to show it's real intentions to the whole world. Advantage US. Nice to see someone smart on the way to the White House.

But of course, this is true with EVERY country who hates America. They ALL use us an excuse for why their country should support their corrupt regime instead of true democracy. That's how tinpot dictators like Castro can stay in power, because they have an enemy their people hate even more than the dictator. Economic embargoes of totalitarian regimes are almost always counter-productive and actually help the evil leader gain more power. When a country faces a sweeping economic embargo, it's the dictator who controls the blackmarket, and we're essentially giving them monopoly power over their own people.

And of course, this is the very reason conservatives support these policies: It's all about finding a common enemy to hate, as a way of binding them together. It's all a self-perpetuating system of hatred, designed to control people on both sides of the hatred.

I believe that's checkmate.

This is yet another situation where Bush's decision to lead with his gut and consider domestic electoral interests instead of using facts to craft a policy that makes sense for the country has clearly backfired.

But prettyboywally, this isn't just Bush's policy. This has been our standard foreign policy for decades. And anyone who didn't believe this was the "serious" position to take was dismissed as a peacenik freak. Even the Clintons adopted this sort of viewpoint in the 90's, though they were more open to diplomacy than Bush was.

In fact, while Bush's was probably the strongest anti-diplomacy stance in modern history, it was merely a reflection of the hardline the foreign-policy conservatives have been demanding for decades. This wasn't an issue of Bush thinking with his gut. This was the realization of a foreign policy agenda conservatives have always wanted, from people who seriously thought Reagan was too soft (as a reminder, Dick Cheney once blasted Reagan for visiting Russia, back when he was a Congressman; and he wasn't the only one). They finally got what they wanted and are seeing why they always got laughed at for saying these things.

But in any case, Obama's stance really is a fairly bold one that has been needed for quite awhile. And he was only able to take it because the hardliners finally were proven to be the fools everyone said they were. But remember, even Clinton engaged in saber-rattling against Iraq. Obama's stance really is something different.

Mr. Benen is confusing Iranian politicians with American ones. American leaders want, and apparently need, tensions with Iran to justify their existence.

I think you could pretty much say the same thing about Cuba -- that American intransigence about diplomacy has been a mainstay of the dictator's propaganda.

Better headline: "Iran Blinks".

Another thing is that the more conflict we have with Iran, the more destabilization in the region, the more the price of oil goes up. The Iranian regime has a lot to lose if their cashflow is drastically reduced.

Mr. Benen is confusing Iranian politicians with American ones. American leaders want, and apparently need, tensions with Iran to justify their existence. Posted by: Brojo

Oh Brojo, you're so knee-jerk.

While that may be true of the Bush administration, if you know anything of Iran's history since Khomeini, anything that undercuts the Great Satan political narrative hurts the Iranian theocracy.

The general populace doesn't hate America per se. They do hate our current government (but don't we all?). However, the mullahs need an intransigent and belligerent U.S. government to justify their repression.

Amazing how the prospects for peace are more destabilizing to the Iranian establishment than any inevitably-counterproductive-and-destructive bombing campaign or war of internal subterfuge.

And more amazing, it took a 47-year-old from Chicago to show the entrenched Washington experts how it is done. Sure, he has his experts, too, but as noted above, the legendary and brilliant Bill Clinton didn't do this.

Aaron@12:58 - The only post getting close to saying
that the stability that Obama's policy of talking brings will be opposed by the Iranians - and paradoxically might make the region more unstable again. The system might fundamentally FAVOR tension.

Case 1: Antagonism on both sides => tension, high oil price.
Case 2: Antagonism by the US, claims to be willing to negotiate by Iran => tension, high oil price.
Case 3: Willing to negotiate by US, willing to negotiate by Iran, =>oil price plummets, moderates thrown out (in Iran), =>new tensions.

I still think that one of the biggest wasted opportunities by the Bush administration was ignoring Iran when they made their first diplomatic gesture in 20 years by expressing their formal sympathy on 9/11. They had a reform-minded president at the time in Mohammed Khatami and we probably could have made some major diplomatic inroads with face saved on both sides.

Instead, Bush publicly called them part of the "axis of evil" and drove Iran further into the arms of the radical mullahs. Khatami got voted out and extremist Ahmadinejad got voted in.

It's almost like Bush was trying to provoke a war or something. Hmmm ....

Meta-pwning, indeed! With one sweet move, Obama puts the Iranian regime in a bind, and shows Bush and the neocons how to play the game.

It's going to be a great eight years.

The activist left has argued this for a very long time. Foreign threats are the bread and butter of despots. When these threats disappear their people are able to make demands for more rights, wages, etc. that were not possible before. This holds true for dictatorships like Iran as well as democracies like the U.S.

Dan Kervick said it best. The Washington Post's story and Washington Independent's comment have little substance, yet a moderate blogger uses them as evidence to make a statement critical of Iran's leadership. I have no idea why Mr. Benen chose the theme that Iran's leadership needs tensions with the US to justify their existence, but such flimsy, Eisenstadt-like substance should be objected to and questioned as to why such a theme, a week after Obama's victory, is being made.

I wouldn't expect too much rationality from Iran.

Amazing how the prospects for peace are more destabilizing to the Iranian establishment than any inevitably-counterproductive-and-destructive bombing campaign or war of internal subterfuge."

The neo-cons have been saying that Obama would strengthen our enemies and weaken us, and it looks like it's the other way around. The neo-con policy has been what strengthened our enemies and weakened us.

Tensions with the U.S. divert people from rising inflation and a cratering Iranian economy.

As Tom Friedman said a week or two ago, the collapse in oil prices puts the mullahs in a situation similar to the Shah 29 years ago.

Anyone who doesn't see the Washington Post as having, essentially, neo-con tendencies when it comes to foreign policy, is missing a big part of the picture.

You have to be not paying attention to not notice. The WashPo and the NYT are reliably center-left (in the US context) on domestic issues, and hawkish on foreign policy.

Their liberal hawk orientation is blatent and consistent, and I believe one reason we don't get much push back (by leftie blogs) against this bias, is because the prominent liberal blogs share these tendencies. Institutional pressures, careerist aspirations, or personal predilections, whatever explains the marked overrepresentation of hawkish opinions at all levels of our media, it's there and obvious to those of us who don't share these views.

As for this WashPo article: we all know about demagoguery and using an enemy to generate identity and solidarity. None of this is new, we're not stupid. It happens in domestic politics (welfare moms, immigrants) and internationally. What concrete claims does the author make?

This article reads like disinformation: advisers to Ahmadinejad said the new U.S. administration would have to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, show respect for Iran's system of rule by a supreme religious leader, and withdraw its objections to Iran's nuclear program before it can enter into negotiations with the Iranian government.

"The U.S. must prove that their policies have changed and are now based upon respecting the rights of the Iranian nation and mutual respect," said Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, the president's closest adviser.

There is a link to Hashemi in the article, the text of which DOES not support the claims made by the author's generic preceding paragraph. The interviewer (the author) pressed the adviser explicitly on each of those points, and the adviser's responses are nothing like their characterizations.

I didn't read Carpetbagger before, is Mr. Benen yet another war-supporting liberal hawk, or maybe easily (willingly?) misled?

For anyone interested, I wrote more about this here:
Conservative Catastrophe: Bigger Than BushConservative Catastrophe: Bigger Than Bush

flubber - What are you talking about? Benen's point is that Iran is fearful of American diplomacy, because it will deny them the ability to denounce The Great Satan if they're seen having open discussions with us. And the point is that we should engage in diplomacy with them, as a way of weakening the hold they have on their people. This is the exact opposite of the warhawk position, which is that diplomacy strengthens Iran and that war is our only real option.

I can't speak for what the WaPo was going for, but Benen's point is in direct opposition to what warhawks want.

There was an article in NYT a couple (?) of days ago about internal changes within Iran. Where Ahmadinejad had, previously, had some opposition (their elections are coming up in, I think, January) from he right, it now seems to be disappearing. All the nuts are consolidating their positions.

I was wondering why that would be happening all of a sudden, but now think it might be because of the outcome of our elections.

Neither faction wants the threat from US to disappear, since it would loosen their hold on the population and weaken their position vis the moderates (vide Republicans' rule by fear, not all that much different). So they'd rather make peace within the right, and build a strong coalition there -- much like the neocons and the theocrats made peace here for "the greater good" (greater assurance of a place at the trough)

For anyone who saw Obama's first press conference after the election this article might seem somewhat ironic, and more of the same neo-con WaPo/NYT cheerleading prevalent before the Iraq invasion. At the press conference, Obama was asked about a relatively positive and somewhat friendly (at least in the context of recent relations) congratulatory letter from Iran, which was the first one of its kind since the overthrow of the Shah. Seems like it might have provided an opportune moment for a response that might actually have been diplomatic, something like "Under my administration, we certainly hope for improved relations with Iran and will do whatever we can to achieve that goal, provided that they make clear to the world that they are not pursuing nuclear weapons and that they take visible steps to show they are acting responsibly in helping improve the climate for peace in the middle east." I don't think that would have been either weak or aggressive but it would show a genuine interest in diplomacy. Instead Obama avoided the question and simply recited the standard talking points of the campaign and the foreign policy establishment, that U.S. will not tolerate Iran with nuclear weapons etc. This does not seem like any genuine opening but rather a continuation of policy as usual, which I think is what will probably happen under the new administration. IOW, if this is any hint as to Obama policy, WaPo might as well be writing about the U.S. foreign policy establishment.

This particular game has been going on for a couple generations with similar results. How many times have people said that normalizing relations with Cuba would be Castro's worst nightmare? But the troglodytes from Jesse Helms and the Miami mafia (Cuban) on have needed the boogeyman of a communist Cuba to maintain their power. Castro needed their opposition to maintain his own power.

The samething is now playing out in Iran and really no one is particularly surprised. I'm sure that there were people in the Bush administration smart enough to realize what was going on, but they needed the Iranians to act as a foil to the Cheney/Bush tactic of fear mongering so they never had any intention, not even the slightest, of ever trying to come to a settlement with the Iranians. It wouldn't surprise me too much if there has been some coordination between the Cheney/Bush administration and the Iranian administration in order to keep each of them in power.